Harold Corwin

NGC 741 = IC 1751. This, along with NGC 742, was discovered by William Herschel, reobserved by John Herschel, and by Lord Rosse. NGC 741 itself is the brightest in a group of galaxies, and the positions in NGC from the Herschels are good. Furthermore, their descriptions make it clear that all saw the same two galaxies. They did not pick up any of the other objects in the area.

This leads to the puzzle of why the brighter of the two was also included in IC. True, it reappeared in Swift's 11th list of "new" nebulae (with one of his typically inaccurate positions), and was reobserved by Herbert Howe at Chamberlin Observatory in Denver. Howe provided a very good micrometric position for it which was adopted by Dreyer for the IC. I suspect that as Dreyer had come to trust Howe's positions and identifications (most of Howe's observations are of known objects), he (Dreyer) didn't bother to check the NGC to see if the galaxy had been seen previously.

More recently, the IC number has been attached in CGCG (and in other subsequent lists) to the galaxy (CGCG 413-006) just over an arcminute northwest of NGC 741. This object is indeed brighter than many that Swift found, but his description of a 9th magnitude star "north-preceding" rather than simply "preceding" pretty well establishes the identity. It is further pinned down by Howe's measurement of the distance and direction to the star (actually a double, or perhaps a single star superposed on a galaxy) which points exactly to NGC 741 as the object that he measured.

― NGC Notes by Harold Corwin

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